Explanation Methods in Clinical Decision Support: A Hybrid System Approach

Abstract

The use of computer-based decision support systems within the field of health science has over the last decades been extensively researched and tested, both in controlled environments and in clinical practice. Despite the obvious benefits of utilizing such systems in the day-to-day activities, many of the designed systems fail to make the impact one could hope to achieve. We have designed and implemented a prototype of a decision support system which use both Case-Based Reasoning and probabilistic inference through a Bayesian Network as a basis for the solution. To achieve user acceptance an explanation module has been implemented which gives the user full access to the data which has been used in the reasoning process, both from the Case-Based Reasoning and the Bayesian Network. The system has shown promising results within the domain of wine recommendation, with a very high accuracy despite uncertain accuracy of the knowledge within the system. Furthermore the explanations presented to an expert conformed to the causal way of reasoning used by said expert, and was accepted as a very useful tool to get pointed in the right direction for evaluation of the solution.